I believe that’s part of what has attracted viewers to the soap opera for decades. We admire the characters not because most of them are essentially good people or that we’re “behind them” but rather that we’ve seen them survive all that life’s had to throw at them for decades. If they can survive all that more or less intact, than any misery life throws at us might not be so bad.

As a caveat, I think this is what Friday Night Lights accomplishes, and one could muse if this subject might be one of the reasons both soaps and FNL have struggled in the ratings. I bought my father and mother FNL season one for Christmas last year. Dad said that he liked the show but working for a company that makes wood products for home building has left him only working four days a week, and he found the show a little too depressing for his current situation. I think that, if he’d watched a few episodes, he’d realize that it has the same effect that soaps does in some ways: leaving you with an amazement that the town of Dillon, Texas, stands and even thrives in its own way, despite the dire straits all its characters are in…The recent story arcs on that show that gives two key characters somewhat miraculous send-offs as they achieve the unlikely was inspiring but a little outside the realm of what that show usually does, giving us not what we hope for but what we’re afraid will happen…Perhaps a little inspiration never hurt anybody, but I think it’s a show that thrives most when it demonstrates life’s imperfection.

Tv follows money and the back-end (dvd’s, reruns, webdeals) for quality is now growing. the lifespan/age of tv shows has grown (up), so it’s not just about getting laid and high schools proms, it’s about the harships of knocking up your highschool sweetheart and living the life you so wanted to avoid.

a bit like when you listen to born to run(album) and then darkness on the egde of town (album)..